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Report offers a comprehensive, fly-on-the-wall account of what transpired during Toronto&rsquo;s G20 weekend.

G20 protesters dressed as clowns plead with police to let them continue marching on Elm St. at University Ave., on June 25, 2010. (CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)

By Jayme Poisson and Jennifer YangStaff Reporter

Wed., May 16, 2012

For the first time, the public has been given a comprehensive, fly-on-the-wall account of what transpired during Toronto’s G20 weekend.

A sweeping report, released Wednesday by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), offers a play-by-play, not only of the dynamic and shifting situation on the ground during the summit, but, more importantly, of what transpired at the highest levels of police command.

OIPRD Director Gerry McNeilly and his team of investigators have the power others probing the G20 do not: They can compel officers to hand over their notes and to submit to an interview.

For their systemic review, McNeilly said OIPRD staff interviewed 600 officers, 200 civilians and pored over thousands of documents, video and audio recordings.

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Overall, the report found that police were woefully unprepared, with officer training “largely delivered electronically,” that officers were “blindly following orders” and using excessive force, “ignor(ing) the basic rights of citizens under the Charter,” and acting unlawfully when they boxed in hundreds of people at the Novotel hotel and at the intersection of Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave.

High-ranking Toronto police commanders overreacted during the G20 summit and assumed an “autocratic structure,” with superior officers giving orders to “take back the streets.”

Some officers on the ground, however, strongly disagreed with orders coming from the top, and one officer accused the Major Incident Command Centre (MICC) of being “maniacal,” according to an audio recording quoted in the report. Other officers disobeyed direct orders to corral people at Queen and Spadina and “personally removed non-protesters and peaceful protesters.”

It was late afternoon on June 26, the Saturday of the G20, when police switched tactics, the report found. Black-clad vandals had been smashing windows and lighting police cars on fire. There was a sense of frustration coming from officers on the front line, as well as from those calling the shots.

In a statement to the OIPRD, night shift Command Officer, Supt. Mark Fenton, said he was told by Deputy Police Chief Tony Warr that he wanted him to “take back the streets.”

“I understood his instructions to mean that he wanted me to make the streets of Toronto safe again,” Fenton explained in the report. “He wanted the streets that had been made unsafe by the terrorists that were attacking our city to be made safe again by restoring order.”

The result, the report said, was an overreaction at the MICC, “causing an almost complete clampdown on all protesters and the mass arrests.”

In total, officers contained people on at least 10 occasions during the G20. On the Esplanade and at Queen and Spadina, protesters were contained specifically to be arrested — a response that “conflicts with the policies and procedures of the Toronto Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, and most other police services,” according to the report, which breaks down the weekend into specific instances across the city.

McNeilly made 42 recommendations in his report, and said he was optimistic those who oversee police, as well as police themselves, would see they’re implemented in a timely manner, although he would not offer a reasonable timeline.

Among the recommendations were changes to the Police Services Act and police Code of Conduct that would impose a duty on officers to disclose potential evidence of misconduct. That senior officers, especially, should not condone or distance themselves from the misconduct of subordinates or colleagues. And that Toronto Police Service should exercise its discretion to expunge the record of those people who were not charged or whose charges were withdrawn where it is not in the public interest to keep them.

For Nora Loreto, who said she was hit multiple times by police at Queen and John streets on the Saturday of the G20 weekend

“For those of us who were there and who will never forget that day, it’s validation, if we felt like we needed it.”

Note: This article was edited to correct a previous version that mistakenly said Nora Loreto was arrested by police on the Saturday of the G20 weekend.

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